Backup Photos Library To External Hard Drive Mac

Backup Photos Library To External Hard Drive Mac 4,3/5 248 votes

Jul 27, 2011  Drag your iPhoto library file from your Pictures folder to an external hard drive to perform a backup. Matt Elliott/CNET A computer crash can be devastating, especially when you lose all of your. I have a huge library in the new Photos app on my Mac OS X Yosemite machine, I want to know the easiest way to export or backup all these photos and videos on an external hard disk (formatted for Mac), giving that, I want to use the photos and videos on a Window 7 machine.

How to transfer your iPhone or Mac Photo library to an external drive. By AppleInsider Staff Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 04:40 pm PT (07:40 pm ET) Storing an entire collection of photographs in. Knowing how to move photos library to external hard drive is important for your editing flow. It saves valuable desktop space and scratch disk memory on your computer. On top of this, using an external hard drive provides other benefits.

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By Stephen Robles
Saturday, January 24, 2015, 11:00 pm PT (02:00 am ET)

Backup Photos Library To External Hard Drive Mac Laptop

Today's digital cameras and advanced smartphones like the iPhone 6 take stunningly detailed photos, but all that extra resolution comes at the price of larger image files. Moving part or all of your iPhoto Library to an external hard drive is one of the most effective ways to free up precious space.



Before starting the process, we suggest making an up to date Time Machine backup of your computer to an external hard drive or Time Capsule. Be sure the external hard drive you use to perform this backup is a separate unit from the one you will move the iPhoto Library to should anything happen.
If you have an account with a cloud storage service, such as Dropbox, Google Drive or even iCloud Drive, you can also upload the iPhoto Library to these services for extra redundancy.


To begin moving your library, open iPhoto, click File in the Menu Bar and select Switch to Library.


A new window will appear listing any and all iPhoto Libraries detected on your computer. If you're not sure where the iPhoto Library file is located, look at the (Default) listing and the file path will be listed underneath. This should be located in the Pictures folder of your Home directory.


Quit iPhoto by going to Quit iPhoto in the iPhoto Menu Bar or pressing Cmd+Q. Connect the external hard drive that you will use to copy the iPhoto Library. You should see it appear on your desktop.


Open a new Finder window and click Pictures in the left sidebar. Click and drag the iPhoto Library file onto the external hard drive icon on your Desktop.


Depending on how large your library is and the connection speed of the external drive, it may take several minutes or longer to complete the copy process.
Once the copy is completed, hold the Option key on your keyboard and open iPhoto from the Dock or Applications folder. A new window will pop up asking you to Create a New Library, Choose the Selected Library or Other Library. Click on Other Library.


In the browser window that appears, navigate to your external hard drive, click the iPhoto Library file you've copied and click Choose.
iPhoto will open and as long as the external hard drive is connected, will reference the library on the external drive and not on your computer's drive.

Quit iPhoto once again and eject the external hard drive holding your new iPhoto Library. Open a new Finder window and navigate to the Pictures folder in the left sidebar again.
Right click or Ctrl+click on the iPhoto file and move it to the Trash.


Finally, to free up the space on your internal hard drive, open the Trash from the Dock or Finder window and click Empty Trash in the upper right corner.


Your iPhoto Library has officially been removed from the internal drive. You can now reconnect the external hard drive you used to copy the iPhoto library, open iPhoto and use it as normal.
If you open iPhoto without your external hard drive connected, iPhoto will give you an error message saying the 'Library cannot be found.' Quit iPhoto, connect the external hard drive and reopen to fix.

Backup Photos Library To External Hard Drive Mac Download

For those looking to expand their beyond their Mac's internal storage HDD or SSD,

How To Backup Photos Library Mac To External Hard Drive

AppleInsider recommends having at least 1TB of extra space at the ready. A few high quality external and portable hard drive options from Seagate, HGST and Western Digital are listed below.

Save Photos To External Hard Drive

  • Seagate 1TB Backup Plus Slim for Mac for $72.99 from B&H and Amazon.com or $88.99 from MacMall
      Also available in 2TB for $99 from Amazon and B&H or $149.99 from MacMall

  • HGST 1TB Touro S Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive for $69.99 from B&H or $83.99 from MacMall
      Available in 4TB for $149 from Amazon and B&H

  • Western Digital 1TB My Passport Drive for Mac from Amazon for $68.45, $69.00 from B&H or $70.99 from MacMall
      Available in 2TB for $96.24 from Amazon, $99 from B&H or $101.99 from MacMall

How To Backup Mac Photos

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Photos User Guide

Even if you use iCloud Photos, it’s important that you always back up your library locally using one of the following methods:

Mar 18, 2020  Your Photos library holds all your photos, albums, slideshows, and print projects. If your library is large, and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, turn on iCloud Photo Library and use Optimize Mac Storage, or move your library to an external drive. Before you start, be sure to. Apr 01, 2020  Designate a System Photo Library in Photos If you have multiple photo libraries on your Mac, you can choose one to be the System Photo Library. The System Photo Library is the only library that can be used with iCloud Photos, Shared Albums, and My Photo Stream. I am not on modern Mac, so I can't say anyhting about the Mac Photos editor which did replace the old iPhoto-editor. I only know that it builts its own Library and thereby you are correct that you need to import the original 'Picasa-folders' from within that app. If you want to edit the photos from iPhoto Library, then you have to copy the entire photo folder to a location outside of the iPhoto Library. Picasa will ask you the permission to copy the folder to 'Imported from iPhoto' 'Pictures' folder name. Here are the steps Import iPhoto Library to Picasa. Apr 26, 2018  I'm being tasked with moving a huge library from the Mac version of Picasa into (Apple) PhotoS. Looking online it seems the regular import function in PhotoS will lose a lot of data. Is there a third party tool which will allow me to preserve the following? - Tags - Captions - Locations - Face. Picasa free download for mac.

  • Use Time Machine: After you set up Time Machine, it automatically backs up the files on your Mac. If you ever lose the files in your Photos library, you can restore them from the Time Machine backup. For more information about setting up Time Machine, see Back up your files with Time Machine.

    Choose new itunes library mac. How to Open a Different iTunes Library on Mac? When you open iTunes, click on the “Choose Library” button. A pop up window will appear, which will show you your Music/My music folder. However, if you had decided to store your iTunes Library in someplace. Now, just select the “Choose” option,. If you’re restoring an iTunes library from a different computer, make sure your new computer has the latest version of iTunes. In the iTunes app on your PC, choose File Exit. Locate your external drive (in File Explorer), then drag the iTunes folder you backed up. Oct 07, 2019  Switch to another iTunes library. Hold down the Option key, then open the Music app or Apple TV app. In the window that appears, click Choose Library. Select a library, then click Choose. Use multiple iTunes libraries on Mac. In the iTunes app on your Mac, choose iTunes Quit iTunes. Hold down the Option key while you open iTunes. In the window that appears, do one of the following: Create a new library: Click Create Library. Choose a different library: Click Choose Library. Mar 16, 2020  How to Transfer iTunes Library to New Mac via External Hard Drive or USB Drive – Step 2. Step 3Quit iTunes Connect your external hard drive or USB drive to the computer Open the iTunes media folder from the location in step 1 Drag the folder to the external hard drive/USB drive.

    WARNING: If a Photos library is located on an external drive, don’t use Time Machine to store a backup on that external drive. The permissions for your Photos library may conflict with those for the Time Machine backup.

  • Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.

If you have more than one photo library, be sure to back them all up.

Backup Photos Library Mac To External Hard Drive

Important: If any of your image files are stored outside your photo library, those files (known as referenced files) aren’t backed up when you back up your library. Be sure to back up those files separately. To make it easier to back up all your image files at once, you can consolidate referenced files into your library. See Change where Photos stores your files.

How To Backup Computer To External Drive

See alsoCreate additional photo libraries in Photos on MacRepair your library in Photos on Mac